


Good Samaritan law

by ShariDeschain



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman and Robin (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Family Fluff, Gen, Protective Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 13:12:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13167639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShariDeschain/pseuds/ShariDeschain
Summary: Damian's not very good at comforting children. Jason's a little better.





	Good Samaritan law

Contrary to popular belief (that he liked to reinforce himself every chance he got), Jason didn’t hate having Damian tagging along with him for patrol. He actually found it kinda funny, mostly because the kid was so serious and liked to fight hard and without too much chattering just like his father, and it amused him to no end to watch the confusion and the fear on the faces of the random thugs they happened to be fighting when they got the living shit beaten out of them by a kid that barely came up to their chests. It was endearing.

“I found the burned warehouse”, Robin’s voice announced through the comm, and Jason checked his coordinates.

“Coming”, he answered, after a moment. “ETA three minutes.”

There were a few seconds of white noise on the other line, and then Damian spoke again: “There are people trapped in the basement. And considering the damage made by the fire, the structure is likely to collapse on itself sooner rather than later.”

“ _Robin_ ”, Jason warned, shooting his grapple at the nearest building. “I said I’m coming.”

This.

This was the only thing he really didn’t like about patrolling with the youngest of their clan (other than Damian being a brat, of course). The sense of responsibility that came with it. Even with Damian being the furthest thing from a defenseless kid, there was still the undeniable evidence that he was, in fact, a kid. That made Jason not only the adult in charge, but also the one that was going to be blamed if anything went wrong - which, considering Damian, was a very likely probability.

“There’s only one way to access the basement, and it’s too small for you anyway”, Damian duly argued, and Jason swore under his breath and started running even if he knew it was a lost cause already.

“I’m almost there, and if I don’t find you above ground I’m going to sell you to the circus”, he growled anyway, hoping that the jab would irritate the kid enough to make him stay put for the handful of seconds he needed to reach him.

“…Damian?”

“I hear children crying”, and Jason could hear the frown in the kid’s voice. “According to _your intel_ , it should’ve been one of the Penguin’s abandoned storehouse, so why there are crying children in the basement?”

The way Damian stressed out the words to imply Jason’s incompetence irked him enough to make him snap. “I don’t fucking know, Robin. Just wait for me.”

White noise again.

It took him two minutes and fifteen seconds to get to the place and find out that Damian - of course - hadn’t even considered the idea of waiting for him. Jason swore again, and punched the comm as soon as he landed on the ground.

“Where the hell are you?”, he asked. “And how do I get there to kick your ass?”

“There is a vent in the back of the building, near the railing”, Damian answered. “Shush.”

“ _Shush?_ ”, Jason repeated, momentarily more surprised than pissed off at the idea of the kid shushing him.

“We’re going to get you out of here, okay?”, Damian’s voice continued in a quiet, almost soft voice, and Jason realized he wasn’t talking to him at all. He found the opening quickly enough: a small manhole attached to some kind of rusty conduct. Probably an old vent, like Damian said. Jason could barely slip both his arms in there, so he had no choice but waiting while he continued to listen to Damian speaking to the kids. It was new to him, and kinda weird, to hear Damian trying to comfort someone. How he tried to sound reassuring with big words and enough self-confidence to fill a man twice his size. It made Jason smile.

“Hood? Can you see me?”

Jason looked down the vent and yes, he could see Damian eight feet below the ground, looking up at him with a four, maybe five years old little girl clinging to his neck.

“That’s cute”, Jason teased. “We should tell Batdad that you need a little sister. I don’t think it’d take too much work to persuade him and Catmom to make you one.”

“ _Shut up_ ”, Damian growled and yes, this time he _was_ talking to Jason. “And take her.”

Jason laughed and reached down for the kid while Damian lifted her as much as he could. It took some adjustment, but in the end he was able to hoist the little girl up into his lap.

“Hey”, he smiled at her. “Gimme a moment and we’ll go get you some ice cream, yeah?”

She was covered in dirt and looked like hell, but she still smiled back at him easily and with too much trust.

“Hood, there are five other kids down here and the walls are about to crumble down”, Robin hissed. “Maybe you could get a move?”

“No ice cream for you”, Jason answered. “And _you_ get a move, Robin. Since you got yourself in there in the first place”, he reminded him.

Damian grumbled something intentionally unintelligible and went to collect another kid. They worked fast and managed to get four other children out ( _six little girl_ , Jason beared in mind, feeling his blood boil. _Six little girl, no older than five, held into a basement of an abandoned warehouse._ Once they were done here he would take Damian home, and then he was going to have a chat with Cobblepot. A very long, hard, violent chat) but the last girl took one look up the vent, saw Jason’s Red Hood helmet peering down, and started crying so suddenly and so hysterically to actually make Damian, who was holding her, jump in surprise.

“What the hell?”, Damian bellowed in response, a little too loud and a little too angry for the already scared little girl to bear, and the following scramble between the two kids would’ve been amusing to Jason, if not for the fact that the crying and the swearing were both covered up by a louder, deeper grumble coming from the basement itself.

Before they could do anything there was a snap, then an eruption of dust that forced Jason to withdraw for a moment.

“Shit”, he and Damian said at the same time.

“Get up here, Robin. _Now”_ , Jason urged, looking down the vent again, but the kids had already disappeared from his sight, swallowed by a cloud of dust. He could only hear coughing and more crying.

“Not enough space for both of us”, Damian yelled up at him, and then, softly, at the girl: “You need to calm down. There’s no need to be scared. He’s going to help you.”

But the girl was even more terrified now. She was blinded and almost suffocated and alone with two strangers. Her sobbing was heart-wrenching and Jason could tell that Damian was starting to panic too.

“Shit”, Jason repeated, then he took off his helmet and tried to conjure up his best child-friendly smile, despite the urge to yell and kick something. If something were to happen to Damian, Dick and Bruce would kill him together, and then Alfred would hide his corpse by feeding it off to Titus and Batcow and whatever other pet the kid had hoarded in the meanwhile. Jason was sure of that.

“Hey, hey, hey”, he called out, trying to catch the girl’s attention once the dust cleared up a bit. He could still see only a little more than shadows, and he doubted the kids could see him any better than he could see them, but he tried anyway: “Look, I took the helmet off. See? Not a bad face, uh?”

In the meanwhile Damian was trying to rock the little girl - not an easy task, considering that he wasn’t that much bigger than her - talking again with his softer voice, sputtering out what sounded like every reassuring word he could think of.

There was another loud series of snaps and crackling of metal and old wood. The girls behind him were now whimpering because of the cold, and Jason started considering all the ways he could enlarge the hole enough to lower himself inside without making the situation worse, but it was clearly impossible.

“You can trust him, I promise”, Damian was saying between coughs, voice tired and hushed and desperately urgent. “He’s my- he’s my big brother. He’s good. He’s a good person. He will buy you an ice cream.”

Jason tried to smile and held out his hand again. It took a few others soothing promises from both him and Damian before the little girl actually reached out to take it, and Jason sighed in relief when his fingers finally closed around the child’s tiny wrist. He smiled at her again while settling her down safely on the ground beside him, then he held his hand out into the vent one final time, ready to take Damian out of there and put an end to the whole night.

Except that Damian wasn’t looking up at him anymore. His head was lowered down between his shoulders, he was shaking with coughs and his hands were on the wall in front of him like he needed the support to not fall down.

“Robin?”, Jason called out in the same voice he used with the little girls. “Kid, come on. I need to take you out of there, you’ll rest in a moment, I promise.”

Damian shook his head, still not looking up at him. Jason felt the worry turning into a sharp pang of panic.

“Dam- Robin, come on. Just one little jump and we’re done, okay? I was lying on the ice cream, I’ll buy one for you too.”

Damian was shaking harder now.

“Can’t breath”, finally came the answer, and it was so choked Jason only heard it through the comm.

“Do you have your rebreather?”, he asked, but it was a stupid question, and he knew it. If the kid had a rebreather on him he would’ve used without any prompt from Jason.

“Okay. Okay. That’s fine. Look, I have mine right here, okay? You only have to take my hand, alright?”

Another fit of coughs.

“I can’t-”

“ _Robin_ ”, Jason barked in his best imitation of the Batman’s voice, and he startled the kid enough to make him look up again. He offered him his hand for the second time, stretching his arm as far as he could into the vent, and repeated, gentler this time: “One little jump, kid. C’mon.”

He couldn’t see the kid’s face behind the thin cloud of dust that still hung between them, but he saw his body language change and a moment later Damian straightened himself up in determination. In the space of time between two heartbeats, Damian took a choked breath, clenched his fists, then jumped. When their fingers touched, Jason was struck by the sicken certainty that he wasn’t going to be able to hold on, that Damian’s jump had been too short and he would’ve slipped away and fallen. But it was only a moment. Their hands closed into a monkey grip and the gauntlets offered enough friction to not let either of their holds slip away.

One instant later Jason had hauled Damian up into his arms, with just a little more force than necessary. But the kid collapsed against Jason’s chest, swallowing down big gulps of fresh air, and didn’t complain one bit.

“Easy now. Easy”, Jason instructed softly, one hand rubbing the kid’s back, the other cupping the back of his head. “In and out. In and out. Take little breaths or you’ll pass out.”

This time, Damian obeyed him. He slowed down his frantic attempts of taking in as much air as he could, and tried to imitate Jason’s breathing. He also shifted into the hold to cling to Jason’s neck and hid his face against his brother’s shoulder. Jason let him settle down, then rested his cheek on top of the boy’s head.

“Jeez Louise, kid”, he sighed. “Let’s not do that again, yeah?”

Damian didn’t answer, but his fingers tightened around the fabric of his jacket in what Jason decided to read as acquiescence. Keeping Damian close, he sat down on the ground and looked around for the girls. He found them cuddled together a few feet from them.

“We need to call the police and an ambulance”, he said, more to himself than to the kids in front of him, or to the one into his arms.

“Already done”, Damian mumbled anyway. “While I was waiting for you.”

“That must’ve been a very brief call, then”, Jason retorted, but not too harshly. He wasn’t in the mood for a lecture right now, not with Damian slumped down safely into his arms and six little girls looking at him with big, wet, scared eyes. “Your big brother, uh?”, he asked instead, unable to stop himself.

“I was suffocating”, Damian reminded him with a groan. “Also, legally I cannot be held responsible of what I say in a situation of danger.”

“That’s undercover cops, kiddo”, Jason laughed. “Dick is making you watch too many tv shows. You ready to get up and go home?”

He felt Damian shift again, his forehead now resting against the side of Jason’s neck. His breathing was still a little strained, but overall he finally sounded okay when he spoke again.

“First I want my ice cream.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr prompt](https://unavenged-robin.tumblr.com/post/168891863418/i-cant-breathe-damian-wayne)


End file.
